It did not occur to Abigail that there was life where she could make a decision without needing the accompaniment of a suitor – but then again hadn’t she done just that by running away from home? She only smiled as Braylen spoke, her heart lifting as he confessed he held no cruelty. Abigail had seen hypocrisy, she had seen a man she believed to be a hero become no more than a devil, and the man she thought to be a devil to be her hero. Things were not so black and white for Abigail, not anymore, but with her blue eyes on Braylen she could not help but feel he were absolutely honest. Her smile grew warmer and she looked away, almost bashfully, and turned her gaze instead to the beauty of his home.
“Come on, walking is boring.”
Again she was brought to look at him, to see the playful expression he wore. It inspired a wide grin on her face and she was only one or two steps behind him as he pulled into a canter along the shoreline. Abigail kicked up her back hooves, sand flying out behind her and hair (bangs dark, the rest white) snapping up in the seaside breeze. Up the shoreline they went, into where the trees grew thick and the vines scratched at her hide, rubbing itches she couldn’t otherwise reach. Their pace slowed only because it had to and they crashed through undergrowth, her ears twitching to hear the calls of strange creatures one would never hear anywhere else but a wonderful place like this. Paradise, she thought, and smiled once more.
Braylen stopped and Abigail did as well, only just looking away from the overgrowth of jungle to the crystalline pool and blooming flowers looking back at her. Their beauty made her gasp, audibly, ears forward and wonder in her gaze that hadn’t been there since she were a wobbly-legged foal. “Oh, wow,” she barely breathed and stepped slowly closer to the water’s edge, sweeping her gaze toward her reflection in the water, to the pebbles and stones gleaming back at her, and then up again to the beautiful array of flowers. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she confessed, unable to look away from the beauty he had shown her.
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